Canadian Cincinnatus

Anne Applebaum on “The Myth of Russian Humiliation”

Anne Applebaum makes an excellent point:

“Looking back over the past quarter-century, it isn’t easy to name a Western policy that can truly be described as a success. The impact of Western development aid is debatable. Western interventions in the Middle East have been disastrous.

But one Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: the integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO. Thanks to this double project, more than 90 million people have enjoyed relative safety and relative prosperity for more than two decades in a region whose historic instability helped launch two world wars.”

This is exactly right. The peaceful expansion of freedom onto Eastern Europe has been nothing short of a miracle in our lifetime, a miracle that is currently in danger of being taken away…

“But times change, and the miraculous transformation of a historically unstable region became a humdrum reality. Instead of celebrating this achievement on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is now fashionable to opine that this expansion, and of NATO in particular, was mistaken. This project is incorrectly “remembered” as the result of American “triumphalism” that somehow humiliated Russia by bringing Western institutions into its rickety neighborhood. This thesis is usually based on revisionist history promoted by the current Russian regime — and it is wrong.”

One of the refrains of the isolationist right is that the West has humiliated Russia in the past 20 years, with the implication that all that Vladimir Putin wants is for Russia to be treated with respect.

“For the record: No treaties prohibiting NATO expansion were ever signed with Russia. No promises were broken. Nor did the impetus for NATO expansion come from a “triumphalist” Washington. On the contrary, Poland’s first efforts to apply in 1992 were rebuffed. I well remember the angry reaction of the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw at the time. But Poland and others persisted, precisely because they were already seeing signs of the Russian revanchism to come.”

Most Eastern European leaders understand the Russian problem better than those in the West, who indulge in pleasant wishful thinking.

“When the slow, cautious expansion eventually took place, constant efforts were made to reassure Russia. No NATO bases were placed in the new member states, and until 2013 no exercises were conducted there. A Russia-NATO agreement in 1997 promised no movement of nuclear installations. A NATO-Russia Council was set up in 2002. In response to Russian objections, Ukraine and Georgia were, in fact, denied NATO membership plans in 2008.

Meanwhile, not only was Russia not “humiliated” during this era, it was given de facto “great power” status, along with the Soviet seat on the U.N. Security Council and Soviet embassies. Russia also received Soviet nuclear weapons, some transferred from Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for Russian recognition of Ukraine’s borders.”

At the time, I thought it was a big mistake for the Ukrainians to give up their nukes; also a big mistake for the West to encourage them to do so. A nuclear-armed Ukraine would have been the best check on Russian territorial ambitions. I felt that Bill Clinton was being very naïve about the powers of ‘nuclear non-proliferation’.

“Presidents Clinton and Bush both treated their Russian counterparts as fellow “great power” leaders and invited them to join the Group of Eight — although Russia, neither a large economy nor a democracy, did not qualify.”

This is right. Russia doesn’t. Though I could see in the 1990’s why one would want to encourage Russia to go down the good path.

“During this period, Russia, unlike Central Europe, never sought to transform itself along European lines. Instead, former KGB officers with a clearly expressed allegiance to the Soviet system took over the state in league with organized crime, seeking to prevent the formation of democratic institutions at home and to undermine them abroad. For the past decade, this kleptocratic clique has also sought to re-create an empire, using everything from cyberattacks on Estonia to military invasions of Georgia and now Ukraine, in open violation of that 1994 agreement — exactly as the Central Europeans feared.”

Russia is a run by a malignant combination of the KGB and the mafia.

“Once we remember what actually happened over the past two decades, as opposed to accepting the Russian regime’s version, our own mistakes look different.”

“The crisis in Ukraine, and the prospect of a further crisis in NATO itself, is not the result of our triumphalism but of our failure to react to Russia’s aggressive rhetoric and its military spending. Why didn’t we move NATO bases eastward a decade ago?”

“Our mistake was not to humiliate Russia but to underrate Russia’s revanchist, revisionist, disruptive potential. If the only real Western achievement of the past quarter-century is now under threat, that’s because we have failed to ensure that NATO continues to do in Europe what it was always meant to do: deter. Deterrence is not an aggressive policy; it is a defensive policy. But in order to work, deterrence has to be real. It requires investment, consolidation and support from all of the West, and especially the United States.”

Of course, that Russians feel humiliated, I doubt not. But it is not the West’s fault. They are humiliated because, unlike the small Eastern European nations they used to oppress, they were unable to successfully make the transition to a free country.

I have always felt that one way you can tell about how bad shape a country is in is by the quality of the solutions it proposes for its problems. Take for instance the Middle East. The secular, military dictatorships that have a run the place since the demise of colonialism until the Arab Spring have always been brutal and dysfunctional. This is a good indicator that the Middle East is in bad shape. But a further indicator, one that shows that the place is in even worse shape than it seems at first glance are the solutions that they, the Arabs, themselves propose: Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, Jihadism, anti-Semitism and the genocide of the Jews. These proffered solutions indicate that the future of the Middle East will be even worse once the dictators go away. As can be seen by the fruit of the Arab Spring.

In the case of Russia, the solution to their problem – to submit to a crude, bellicose, strongman – is low quality indeed, and is a predictor that Russia also does not have a bright future. Unless it smartens up - soon.

Jian Ghomeshi, and the decline of the National Post

Yesterday was Election Day for Ontario’s municipalities. However the National Post’s front page headline was not about Toronto’s colourful Mayor’s race, or indeed about any of the other municipal elections going on across Canada’s biggest province. Rather, the Post’s lead story was about one Jian Ghomeshi, a ‘popular’ CBC radio host, who was fired over some kind of sordid sex scandal and who is now suing the CBC for an American-style settlement. All titillating I admit, but really, who cares?

Personally, I have never heard of this CBC ‘star’ before he was fired. Perhaps this is because I refuse to listen to government propaganda but I think many Canadians are in the same boat. He is part of the CBC/Canadian-content crowd who love to pretend that they are more Canadian than thou (and therefore more anti-American), but whose lives and ideas and output are completely alien to the average Canadian who buys his coffee at Tim Horton’s in the morning on his way to work, and whose idea of a CBC star is Don Cherry.

I think most Canadians understand that if a Canadian has real talent, he will end up going down to the States, like James Cameron, Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, etc. It’s the smug wanna-be’s that stay here to eat lunch at the CBC cafeteria.

Now I know that there are people from elsewhere in Canada reading this who will say, Toronto election or scandal involving CBC elitist, who cares? Both stories are a bunch of Toronto crap that no red-blooded native of Saskatchewan will ever give a damn about. Perhaps, but as a red-blooded Torontonian, let me note that to most real people living in Toronto – i.e. the suburbanites in Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke, Jian Ghomeshi and the rest of the Canadian cultural establishment might as well be from the Moon (even though they also live in Toronto). We are just as alienated by the Yorkville in-crowd as a fur trapper from Yellowknife is (which is why Rob Ford retained his popularity in spite of his crack habit - he unabashedly championed us against the elites).

Which brings us back to the National Post. Conrad Black may be rich and haughty and arrogant – the epitome of a tuxedo-clad elitist, but he would have never made the mistake of conflating the CBC/Can-con crowd of Maude Barlow with genuine cultural leadership. Black’s genius when he started the National Post was that he didn’t simply want to build another populist megaphone but to do something much more ambitious. He wanted to foster an alternate Canadian elite, one that is not invested in self-loathing, anti-Americanism, multiculturalism, and socialism. His National Post represented an elitism that stood athwart our country’s existing intelligentsia and yelled Stop!

It’s a pity that the National Post’s current proprietors do not understand this.

Carol Costello, the vicious misogynist fronting CNN

Carol Costello is some kind of talking head at CNN. The open glee she exhibits to a tape of a women being beaten up that she plays for the audience has to be seen to be believed.

Watch the video embedded in this link to see what I mean.

Carol Costello thinks she is demonstrating moral superiority. She is really demonstrating her own moral depravity. I rarely use the term evil to describe political enemies (unless they are foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin or Pol Pot), but the use of that adjective here is entirely justified:

Carol Costello is evil. 

Of Sergeant’s-At-Arms and Honour Guards

You know, until yesterday, I though the position of Sergeant-At-Arms in the House of Commons was largely ceremonial – a retirement perk to the politically connected; that the man who wears antiquated costumes and carries a golden mace into Parliament is little more than an actor. One of the gratifying things I learned yesterday, in that otherwise horrible day, is that I was wrong: that it is a serious job, held by a serious man, with long experience as a peace officer, who is also properly armed to face real trouble. He is far more than just a play-actor.

On the other hand, pictures taken at the War Memorial immediately prior to the shooting showed two Canadian soldiers, both real soldiers – not actors, and both armed with serious weapons – the C-7 assault rifle. When the Islamofascist murdered Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, his fellow guardsman could not retaliate. He was helpless in the face of the enemy. The magazines of their C-7’s were empty, no doubt for reasons of safety.

Now in the military, there are many times when it is absolutely necessary for a soldier to not possess any ammunition; for instance, in a training exercise when he must shoot at other soldiers with blanks. In this case, it is absolute necessary for the officers running the exercise to inspect all weapons and magazines to make sure that no live rounds are present that could turn a training exercise into tragedy. Also, the military must keep a tight control over its firearms, magazines and ammunition; otherwise, the army will turn into a grab-bag for black-market gun dealers. Still, if we are going to post men on guard duty, they should be properly equipped to actually do real guard duty.

Now it can be argued that guarding the War Memorial is not ‘real’ guard duty but is just a ceremonial show, much like the redcoats with their black bearskin hats who guard Buckingham Palace. Nothing can be served, so this line of thinking goes, by adding live ammunition into the activity that is more for the benefit of tourists than anything else.

I think the prevalence of this sort of logic speaks volumes about the unseriousness of our society. People who reason like this don’t really believe that there are real threats in the world. These people believe, as Col. Jeff Cooper once pointed out, “that food comes from the grocery store, that safety comes from the policeman, and that bad news is something that happens to other people.” This delusion is inculcated by a too-long period of peace and prosperity. Our primitive minds often cannot handle good fortune. We end up indulging in fantasy.

Atrocities like this remind us that the people of the West need to start getting serious about life. Among other things, one thing we need to do is that if we say we are going to guard something (even if it is just for ceremonial reasons), we should damn well do it for real.

Senate Republican candidates badly underperforming in mid-term elections so far

Michael Barone, writing in the Washington Examiner has a sunny take on the upcoming midterms, predicting big trouble for the Senate Democrats. The essence of the argument comes from an excellent analytical article by Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post. What Cillizza did was to compare the public approval of Democrat Senate candidates with President Obama’s approval in their state. In every case but one (South Dakota), the Democrat Senate candidates are outperforming Obama, sometimes by a wide margin. For instance, the Democrat running for the Senate in Alaska and Arkansas is 14% more popular than Obama is in that state. And these candidates are running behind their Republican adversary. In West Virginia and Kentucky, they outperform Obama by 12%. Barone (and Cillizza) use these numbers to show how much of a gale force headwind Democrats face in the upcoming mid-terms. In other words, 2014 is a Republican year.

While it is undoubtedly true that the GOP has been enjoying exceptionally favourable circumstances, I have a different, and more pessimistic, take: look at how poorly the Republican candidates themselves are doing. A perfect illustration is Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell. He was first elected in the Reagan wave of 1984. He is currently the Senate minority leader, the most powerful Republican Senator, and has held this post since 2007. In 2012, Mitt Romney won the state of Kentucky with 61% of the popular vote. Obama only got 38%. No Obama sweep there. In the two years since then, Obama’s popularity in Kentucky has plunged to 30%. By all these measures, Mitch McConnell should be cruising to victory, and his opponent, Allison Grimes, should be a non-entity. And yet, he is only barely leading her in the polls. The possibility that the GOP will retake the Senate and Mitch McConnell loses probably won’t happen, but it is nevertheless real. All of these facts taken together say one thing: Mitch McConnell is performing extraordinarily badly. He is simply an awful, unappealing candidate.

Why is it so? Leaving aside the individual peculiarities of Kentucky, he isn’t the only lackluster Republican senatorial hopeful. As Cillizza points out, the problem is widespread. With the political environment arrayed against the Democrats, along with the implosion and disarray of the Obama administration, why aren’t the Republicans heading for 55 or 60 seats in the Senate? The conditions seem right for a romp. And yet, they are struggling merely to achieve a bare majority in the Senate.

The missing ingredient, I think, is leadership, or the lack thereof. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are, until a presidential candidate is selected, the de facto leaders of the Republican Party. And they are probably its worst leaders in living memory. They have been simply dreadful. The Mainstream Media and the RINO’s have accused the Tea Party grassroots activists of demanding an excessive desire for ideological ‘purity’. In portraying the choice Republicans face as one between pragmatism and principle, they are presenting a false dilemma, perhaps intentionally so. The problem with Boehner and McConnell isn’t a lack of ‘purity’ – Mitch McConnell’s voting record is quite respectable – the problem is that he can’t lead. In every test of wills with Obama, he caves. This, rather than lack of purity is the source of his misfortune.

The Republican establishment has been criticized for focussing more on the GOP internal power struggle between the Tea Party and the establishment than attacking the Democrats. The nasty primary in Mississippi, where Thad Cochrane used particularly underhanded tactics to win, is a perfect example. Mississippi is conservative enough that Cochrane will likely prevail in spite of the bad feelings among his core supporters, but GOP veteran Pat Roberts, in Kansas, is currently behind. The irony in all of this is that if the establishment had concentrated their energies on putting forward a coherent alternative message to Obama, an internal threat would not have emerged. Conservatives would have rallied around their flag. But because Boehner and McConnell fly no flag at all, all they get is friendly fire, and rely on the mistakes made by their opponents to prevail.

Even worse, there is border protection and illegal immigration, which can be a topic unto itself. Here McConnell and Boehner have systematically sided with corporate lobbyists against not only their own grass roots supporters but against the American people at large. While money may be important, being on the right side of the people is even more important. Aside from the votes, being popular is a source of money all its own. Lots of little donors and money bombs rather than a few fat-cat cheques.

If they truly wanted to capitalize on their good fortune, in addition to not making unforced errors like pushing amnesty, the GOP should nationalize the election. In the past, whenever they present a unified platform - as they did in 1994 and 2010, and way back in 1966 - they do very well. Whenever they don’t, conservatives – who make up 40% of the electorate - aren’t motivated. A national platform, like Newt Gingrich’s Contract for America, is what is needed.

If they did that, the Grand Old Party would be cruising to 55 to 60 seats in the Senate.

Vladimir Putin’s megalomania has now officially reached third-world dictator proportions

“Vladimir Putin Celebrated as Hercules on his Birthday”

Until now, I considered Russian President Vladimir Putin to be dangerous but pragmatic. Now I am no longer sure about the pragmatic part.

Of morality, public shaming, and leprechauns

A couple days ago in Toronto, there was a shameful incident on a bus that ended very well.

First the incident. According to the National Post:

‘“So after work I get onto a packed 72 Pape bus and I ask this COLOSSAL DOUCHE BAG very nicely if he can please … move his bag off the seat beside him so I can sit down,” wrote Facebook user Brenda Davie in a Wednesday night post.

“He says, ‘No, my bag is there.’”

In the brief exchange that followed, according to Ms. Davie’s account, the man called her an “airhead,” stomped on her foot and then physically shoved her “into a pile of people.”’

Sweet. On a crowded bus, a man refuses to take his bag off the seat next to him so that a lady could sit down… then he assaults her. It is worth noting that the ‘man’ in question was a Q-tip armed, Olive Oyl-physiqued metrosexual.

‘In a 40-second camera phone video, the man can be seen telling a standing Ms. Davie “you get nothing, pay attention.”’

The good part of the story is that he got his comeuppance, but not from official channels.

‘“At the time I didn’t feel like standing around Pape station … for a pair of cops who would most likely be dicks and make me feel like I’m wasting their time,” she said when asked why she had not filed an assault report.’

Good for her. She would have just wasted her time, cooling her heels, just to end up completing bureaucratic paperwork. Instead, thanks to the camera footage:

‘In a matter of hours, the search for the “leprechaun,” as he has been dubbed because of his green dress shirt and tuft of chin beard, had become one of the most high-profile examples of using social media to shame violators of TTC etiquette.’

‘The overnight fame of Ms. Davie’s post is commensurate with a growing North American trend toward using social media to combat instances of alleged antisocial transit behaviour.

The Tumblr blog “Men Taking Up Too Much Space On The Train,” for one, collects images of men whose sitting position on public transit is deemed to be too luxurious.’

Did all of this attention get to the ‘Leprachaun”? According to the Post:

‘The identity of the alleged assailant remains unknown, although a source told the National Post that the man works at a downtown call centre and failed to show up to work after news of the transit incident became viral.’

That this look-at-me hipster ended up sitting at home, in the dark, with the shades drawn is the perfect ending to this story. And a good illustration of how spontaneous social shaming can function in society to control human behaviour that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) rise to the level where the criminal code needs to take over. I bet Mr. Leprechaun will behave more politely in the future (and dress more to blend in than stand out).

The alternate approach, favoured by bureaucrats and social engineers everywhere is to institute rules and bylaws and schemes and enforcement mechanisms to police the ‘microaggressions’ of everyday life. Such policies have been popular in recent decades with mixed to poor results. Indeed, on Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) vehicles, ‘designated seats’ exist with signs explaining that able-bodied people sitting there must vacate them to the elderly, the disabled or pregnant women. From what I have seen, they are ignored. Decent people give up their seats to those less fortunate regardless of where they sit, and the selfish keep behaving like the hipster leprechaun. Just a bunch of wasted tax dollars.

Unfortunately, bylaws and schemes like this are often worse than useless. Not only are they ineffective on correcting the anti-social behaviour they are meant to correct, but they can be used by bureaucrats and officials to harass perfectly innocent people for reasons that have nothing to do with the original intent of the law.

When conservatives say that society is held together by unwritten social conventions, the public shaming that Mr. Leprechaun got is precisely the kind of thing we mean. No jail, no fine and no tax dollars wasted - just corrected behaviour. And the prevalence of phone camera means that small-town social shaming has now debuted in the big city.

The two most important people in Toronto’s mayoral election are not on the ballot

There is an interesting dynamic at play in Toronto’s mayoral race, and it has manifested itself in a recent poll. Rob Ford’s brother Doug has now pulled neck-and-neck with the frontrunner, John Tory.

The two important people not in the race? Former Mayor David Miller and current Mayor Rob Ford. Why are they the most important people even though they are not running for office? Because many voters are basing their decision on getting (or avoiding) the next David Miller or next Rob Ford.

To people not from Toronto, Rob Ford needs no introduction. He excites all the right people in all the wrong ways, the same way that Sarah Palin does. By right people, I mean the white, liberal intelligentsia, who mostly live downtown. They Hate Rob Ford. While their ideal candidate in this election is, or would be, Olivia Chow - an extreme-left former Toronto City councillor who represented a downtown ward - their number one goal is not re-electing Rob Ford. But now that Rob Ford has stepped down because of cancer, this translates into not electing his brother Doug. Because Olivia is stuck in the 20% range, they are flocking to front-runner John Tory as their second choice. My sometime guest-blogger, Mike Downtown, tells me of a number of urban trendies in his circle of acquaintance who plan on holding their nose and voting for Tory.

On the other hand, the people in the suburbs don’t fear the next Rob Ford so much as they fear the next David Miller. While he didn’t make a spectacle of himself on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, Miller did incalculable damage to Toronto, specifically with tax hikes, insane traffic-snarling projects like the St Clair Streetcar Right-of-Way, and a complete screw-up of Toronto’s garbage collection system. To my American readers, the best American analog of David Miller is New York Mayor Bill de Blasio: he looks like a CEO, he talks like a CEO, but he’s really a Marxist.

When I first heard that Olivia Chow wanted to be mayor, I confess I was scared. I knew of her hard-left past of course, but I also was afraid that Torontonians of Chinese background might want to elect Toronto’s first Chinese mayor. In the last election, they - Toronto’s largest ethnic group by far - backed Rob Ford. (In Toronto, ethnic groups and immigrants live in the suburbs and tend to be center-right, at least municipally.) But it turns out, I didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t the only one afraid of the next David Miller. Seven years of Miller was enough and most people think Olivia Chow wants to be the next David Miller.

When Chow looked like a credible threat, mainstream voters flocked to Tory. To my American readers, the best analogue of John Tory is Mitt Romney, minus the business acumen: a bland, centrist cipher, who wants to be a political leader but lacks the touch. But now that Chow has tanked, many Fordanatics feel free to flock back to Rob Ford’s torch bearer, his brother. This is the reason, I think, for the recent uptick in Doug Ford’s support.

This is what I mean by interesting dynamic. There are three main candidates: Olivia Chow, John Tory, and Doug Ford. John Tory leads but excites no-one. In contrast, Olivia Chow and Doug Ford’s supporters are hard-core. Tory’s ranks are largely made up of people repelled by one of the other candidates, or more precisely, who one of the other candidates stands in for. As a result, Tory’s support is a mile wide but an inch deep, and this race is still in a profound state of flux. 

I told you so: “Images Show the Buk that Downed Flight MH17, Inside Russia, Controlled by Russian Troops”

When I first wrote about the Malaysian Airlines 777 that was shot down over the Ukraine, I stated that the Kremlin’s fingerprints were all over the shoot-down. In response, I received a number of comments chiding me for jumping to conclusions, with at least one speculating that it was a Ukrainian ‘false flag’ operation.

 

The more time lapses, the more it becomes clear that I was right in my ‘premature conclusion.’ The latest bit of evidence comes from some investigative journalists who present detailed photographic evidence that the Buk launcher used to down MH17 is from a Russian unit.

 

Take that, Kremlin stooges and Putin-lovers!